On the occurrence of what is known as death the components of the body are no longer held together, as it were, by the formative faculty, and the body loses its vitality. But, in the ordinary course of things, of form there remains this formulative faculty, or impulse to re-combine. "Form is destructible, yet it remains 'form' in the sense that it has within it the power to renew form." The most important factor in the formation of man is not the material particles that make up his body, but "form." This "form" is a reality, but not a materiality. If the interaction of the component parts, under the influence of externalities, ceases to work towards the preservation of the formative faculty or re-combining influence, a material presentation of "form" will not re-ensue, and the discontinuance of the formative element is Reality, Truth, Nirvana, God. If the desire to describe a triangle on paper does not exist, the materialized presentation of a real axiomatic triangle will not be formed, while the perfect triangle still remains a Reality. In this case, under certain influences, the formative faculty has been subdued, and the consequence is that the material form of the triangle, in its necessary imperfection, has not been produced. The perfect triangle is the undescribed triangle. Should bubbles on the surface of the ocean be deprived of this formative faculty which made them as they are, the power to resume their shape after dissolution would be gone for ever. But if the faculty to re-form remained, they would again crop up on the surface of the sea, the formative faculty making use of the materials at hand under the influences of "form." Analogously, the Saint, according to Buddhism, who is rid of the formative faculty, does not re-exist as a phenomenal being. It might be objected that to make use of the expression "formative faculty" is only to revert to the doctrine of essences and faculties as principles of explanation, and to rely on the exploded superstition of _apriorism_. But this is not the case. The formative faculty is a quality of form, and form is an experience. The intangible and manifest, such as form, can as reasonably be credited with qualities as the tangible and material. "The soul is a special form of life, as the flame is a special form of motion." It is also a product of life, and life is the arrangement and re-arrangement of matter, subject to form, with which are associated the qualities of matter and the relations and interactions of these qualities.